I rarely drink water from a juice glass. At work, I drink my way through a 32-ounce Nalgene bottle. At home, I drink water from large tumblers or Dixie cups. But this morning we were out of Dixie cups, and I wanted just a sip of water. So I filled a juice glass at the kitchen sink and had a moment of what Proust calls "involuntary memory," the unbidden return of the past via sensory stimuli.
Drinking this glass of water brought me back to the details of my grandparents' Brooklyn kitchen. The juice glass brought to mind my grandparents' glassware, most likely made by Libbey, with floral designs baked on. Water from my grandparents' tap would turn to a gray cloud in a glass and then clear. Whatever the reason -- aeration? the softness or hardness of the water? -- it doesn't happen at my sink. (And right now I am also remembering being fascinated in childhood by jelly glasses, the way whatever stories they told -- usually of the Flintstones -- ended and began again and again as one turned the glass, like a childhood version of Finnegans Wake.)
Looking around this memory kitchen, I recalled four other details -- cutlery with red plastic handles, a aluminum percolator with a glass knob at its top, a black- and grey-speckled metal roasting pan, and the fluorescent ring that seemed at one point synonymous with "kitchen," anybody's kitchen. I thought about aprons and anisette, but only vaguely. I thought of my grandparents as being in the living room, right next to the kitchen.
Later this afternoon, my wife Elaine made espresso, and the metallic coffee smell put me in my grandparents' kitchen all over again.
